As many as sixty-five drawings by the painter have been unearthed following the discovery of a sketchbook, French publishers Le Seuil confirmed.

It’s believed the finding is one of the biggest art world discoveries in years, it dates back to his time in the south of France in the late 19th Century.

It was during that period that Van Gogh suffered serious psychological issues, which led to him cutting off his ear and eventually taking his own life.

A man looks through the pages of a book of drawings from Dutch post-impressionist painter Vincent Van Gogh at the architecture academy in Paris (Picture: Getty)

The Lost Arles Sketchbook has revealed 65 unseen works of art (Picture: Reuters)

The Dutch artist – seven of whose works are among the 30 most expensive paintings ever sold – is thought to have made the ink drawings in the accounts book of a hotel he was staying at in the southern France city of Arles.

The 26cm by 40cm sketchbook was a business ledger given to van Gogh in May 1888 by the owners of a cafe where he was living.

It was rediscovered three years ago by the Canadian-based art historian Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov, a leading expert on Van Gogh.

The retired professor, who has curated many exhibitions of van Gogh’s work, was in France when she was asked by a local art scholar to look at an album containing some of the artist’s material.

One of Vincent van Gogh’s self portraits (Picture: AP)

Although the originals were not shown at the Paris press conference to announce the discovery, a book reproducing the drawings, Vincent Van Gogh, the fog of Arles: the rediscovered sketchbook, will be published on Thursday in France, the US, Japan, Britain, Germany and the Netherlands.

It is thought to be the eighth van Gogh sketchbook in the world.

They are all housed in the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and span the decade from 1880 to 1890 when he fatally shot himself at the age of 37.